Educational Science

On the island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic, there lives a creature that Guinness World Records has dubbed the world's oldest animal on land. His name is Jonathan, and he's a giant tortoise. According to Guinness World Records, Jonathan was 187 years old in 2019. Born in 1832,...

Why rescuers are feeding turtles mayonnaise after a disastrous oil spill

While some people slather mayonnaise on their sandwiches, Israel's National Sea Turtle Rescue Center uses the condiment for a unique purpose: to treat endangered turtles after oil spills, The Associated Press (AP) reported. More than 100 miles (160 kilometers) of Israel's Meditteranean coastline became blotted with huge globs of tar...

This week, thousands of sea turtles were paralyzed in the frigid waters along the Texas coastline during the unprecedented winter storm that swept across the country. In response, a small army of volunteers, many of them without power and running water, sprang into action to rescue these endangered creatures. So...

Depressing Image Shows Dead Baby Sea Turtle Found with 104 Pieces of Plastic in Its Belly

A photo of a baby loggerhead sea turtle that died after eating 104 pieces of plastic went viral on Facebook this week. The photo was posted by the Gumbo Limbo Nature Center in Boca Raton, Florida, on Tuesday (Oct. 1) and shows the lifeless turtle, no bigger than the palm...

How Butt Gas, Drugs and Amazing Memories Led to This Weird Turtle Photo

The ancient cosmologers were right and Galileo was wrong: This turtle's got the whole freaking world on its back. Live Science saw the above photo circulating on Twitter early last week and reached out to its originators — the good folks at Task Force Turtle — to get the full...

Ancient turtle with a frog face sucked down its prey millions of years ago

Paleontologists in Madagascar recently discovered an exceptionally well-preserved fossil of a new and extinct species of turtle, dating back to the late Cretaceous Period, which began around 100 million years ago. The newly discovered species would have had a frog-like face and eaten by sucking in mouthfuls of prey-filled water....

Infamous 'Lizard King' of Florida nabbed in turtle heist

A Florida reptile dealer known as The Lizard King faces federal charges for illegally harvesting turtles from the wild to smuggle out of the United States and sell overseas. The 54-year-old Michael Van Nostrand owns the reptile wholesale store Strictly Reptiles, Inc. in Hollywood, Florida. The business sells a variety...

Baby leatherback sea turtles thriving due to COVID-19 beach restrictions

Baby leatherback sea turtles are doing better than they have in years, now that many humans are opting (or being ordered) to stay off beaches due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On one beach in Thailand, for instance, environmentalists have found 11 leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) nests since November, the...